


I'm A Mess

by IncompleteSentanc (Erava)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Creepy weird half sibling incest thing idek, Gen, Humor, Not a time travel fic for once! Look at me!, Random Deer Encounters, Technically there is both incest and non-incest in the relationship, They bone., dirty birdies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-20 23:28:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14904233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erava/pseuds/IncompleteSentanc
Summary: There was probably a time when Shikai wasn’t insane.Probably.It’s undeniable, however, that that time has passed. “What the fuck.” Shikai demands to no one, except maybe a nearby tree. She’s on the outskirts of a forest with the faces of the Hokage looking down on Konoha.(Or in which a totally mentally stable woman gets sent to another world, for some reason)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys. I'm dipping my toes back into the waters of the Naruto fanbase. I know, I know. Everyone hates OCs. But it's practically law that if you write Naruto fanfiction, you have to do at least one OC. I hope you guys enjoy the fic. (Also, 25th fic posted! Eeee!)

There was probably a time when Shikai wasn’t insane.

Probably.

It’s undeniable, however, that that time has passed. “What the fuck.” Shikai demands to no one, except maybe a nearby tree. She’s on the outskirts of a forest with the faces of the Hokage looking down on Konoha.

She’s stupefied.

One minute she’d been skiing, the next she was laying on a tree branch with sap in her hair.

One minute she’d been named Akina, and she doesn’t even know yet that that’s changed.

“Fuck.” Shikai decides. A soft noise has her looking behind her, freezing automatically. A young fawn is approaching her with curiosity. “Hey, little one.” Shikai says quietly even as she looks out for an angry parent deer.

The fawn makes a weird ass sound, lets Shikai touch her briefly, and then trots right back off like nothing had happened.

Shikai returns her attention to Konoha.

“What the fuck!” She repeats, still not having an answer. There are four heads on the mountain, and Shikai _knows_ this story, front to back. She knows it and it’s not a pretty picture. “I’m delusional.” Shikai realizes aloud, then frowns. “But if you’re delusional, you can’t tell your delusional.” She squints suspiciously at the distant monument before looking down.

“Mother _fucker.”_ Shikai groans.

She doesn’t even have boobs. She’s a _kid._

Like, start of the series kind of kid, which makes all this ridiculous nonsense even worse. Bad enough to be delusional (possibly?) without throwing her into the ninja world.

She wrinkles her nose and contemplates that for a second.

“Shikai?” Someone asks and she turns to see the scarred face of Shikaku staring down at her. “What are you doing out here?”

“Sleeping.” She lies, pulling a twig from her hair as proof. “What are you doing out here?” She fires back immediately.

Shikaku squints at her.

She squints back.

“I had my duties today. The forest needed tending to.” He explains and Shikai blinks, realizing for the first time where _exactly_ she is.

The Nara Forest on the outskirts of Konoha.

For a moment, she lets herself get distracted and takes in the beauty of the forest. Pine needles litter the ground, the trees are _towering,_ and if she remembers right, the forest is basically half the size of Konoha itself. “It’s beautiful.” She notes a little wistfully.

Shikaku looks surprised but quietly nods his agreement. He has no way to know she lives (lived?) in a desert, so pine trees were basically nonexistent unless she goes up to the mountain.

The mountain she’d been at fifteen minutes ago.

“This is not what I had in mind when I said it was a magical place.” Shikai mutters darkly, feeling oddly betrayed by the mountain.

“Hm?” Shikaku asks, peering at her curiously.

“Nothing.” She says, then pauses, considering. There’s no way he’d believe something _hadn’t_ happened to her. A sudden personality change doesn’t go unnoticed. And her mother taught her one very important lesson in life.

If you can’t stun them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

“I fell and hit my head. Who are you again?” She asks curiously.

He stares at her. She stares back.

“No, but seriously, who are you?”

Shikaku heaves a sigh, rubbing at his face. “Your mother…” he says slowly, “is going to skin me alive. C’mon, let’s get you to the hospital.”

 

* * *

 

It takes an hour for Shikai to figure out a large number of things.

Number one on her checklist is that she’s named Shikai.

Two is that deer like her, apparently?

Three is that pre-Akina Shikai was an avid tree climber and absolutely no one was surprised to hear she had a fall.

 _Four,_ and probably the most important one, is that she’s Shikaku’s eleven year old daughter.

She’s pretty sure the ‘main characters’ started out twelve, so she’s a year behind.

Presumably, she also has a certain brother now, which is very awkward.

Shikai was always attracted to intelligence, and Shikamaru is incredible. “It’s going to be hard,” she muses as Yoshino screeches at Shikaku in the other room, “to not get a lady boner for my brother.”

And isn’t that a sentence you never thought you’d say?

At least she’s eleven and he’s a tween too. Too young for fooling around.

 _For now,_ a dark part of her brain promises, and Shikai groans loudly.

“Why is this happening?” She whines loudly before collapsing onto her bed.

So far, she’s sticking with the amnesia joke, wanting to see how far it’ll carry her before she gets found out. The nurses at the hospital said brain injuries were ‘very delicate’ and couldn’t heal like magic, and that apparently part of her skull _was_ actually cracked.

Who knows why Pre-Akina Shikai would’ve been walking around with a cracked skull, but at least it doesn’t hurt too bad. And it explains the weird headache she’s had since her arrival.

But, alas, the problem remains.

Her mountain betrayed her and threw her into the Naruto universe.

She doesn’t know how, but she knows why. The death toll against Madara and the Zetsu’s had been ridiculously insane. Obviously, she’s supposed to help stop that.

Unfortunately, she has no idea how.

Well, okay, she has ideas. Just not very good ones. Shikai wishes she could write it all down, but it’s utter crazy talk and _super_ illegal, so she has to keep in mental.

So far, her mental checklist of things to do is as follows:

-Find a way to kill Danzo, asap. Period. No hesitation.

-Find Naruto and be not-a-dick to him.

-Find Sakura and try to talk sense into her.

-Eat food.

-Eat a lot of food. She’s _starving._ She hops off the bed and heads downstairs to the kitchen, ignoring the continued yelling of her ‘parents’ as she passes by.

 

After a bit of struggle, she fishes out a container of what looks like… well, she’s not sure what it looks like, but it’s noodle-y.

She eats it ridiculously fast. When was the last time she was as hungry as that? Yeesh, what a meal.

She gets up, contemplates for a moment, and then goes to get seconds.

One day of pigging out can’t hurt her body too much, right?

 

* * *

 

Shikai runs into a problem.

“I need to talk to Naruto.”

“What about?” Shikamaru demands, eyes narrow. He’s only a few inches taller than her, but it still bugs her, the way his brown eyes bore into her…

“What?” Shikai asks distractedly.

“What do you want to talk to Naruto about?” Shikamaru repeats, more thoroughly, and Shikai sighs.

“Stuff and things, what’s it to you? I want to know where that stupid ramen place he always talks about is.” (She’s really hungry again already)

“I don’t know. Look at the academy.” Shikamaru grunts and Shikai shakes her head.

“No, no, he’s not there.” She says with certainty.

Even though she’s never left the Nara compound, she _knows_ he’s not at the academy.

Somehow.

Shikamaru stares at her oddly for that one, which she can’t even blame him for.

“Have you considered we’re meeting him tomorrow for the academy anyways?” Shikamaru points out.

She blinks once. “Yes. Of course. But I’m impatient, and I’m hungry _now.”_

“I saw your lunch, how are you hungry?” Shikamaru demands, honestly confused, and Shikai shrugs, already meandering towards the kitchen. “Wait. You forgot Dad but you remember _Naruto?”_

Oops. “It’s the orange.” She says the first thing to pop into her head. “And the loudness.” More seriously, she shrugs. “I have bits and pieces. I remembered you a bit, yeah?” She points out, reaching the kitchen and zooming straight for the fridge.

“You’re acting wrong.” Shikamaru tells her bluntly.

“I have swelling in my brain.” Shikai points out, and that shuts him up. For now, at least. She grabs a box of rice and a thing of soy sauce, mixes it, and eats it at light speed.

“Have you been training?” Shikamaru asks suspiciously. “You’re acting like you used too much chakra.”

Shikai pauses, blinking at that knowledge tidbit. “Can’t remember. Isn’t that supposed to make you collapse, though? I remember that much.”

“Yeah, well. There’s a line between exerting and overexerting.”

Fair enough.

“What about you?” She asks curiously, munching away, and he arches a brow. “Have you been training?”

The energy seems to drain right out of him. “While you were playing in the woods, I was getting my progress report.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah. I’m next.” Shikamaru glances in the direction their parents are still yelling.

“This family seems strangely violent.” All their discussions have been about fighting.

Or food. Can’t forget the food.

“Hm.” Shikamaru grunts noncommittally. “Oh, here’s yours. Iruka-sensei passed it on.” He passes her a paper and, super curious now, she opens it as fast as possible.

She’s…

“Yes!” She cheers, because she is the _deadest_ last. “Civilian life for me~” She sings, happily dodging that bullet.

“They’re kicking you out?” Shikamaru demands, alarmed, before he wrenches the paper from her hands. He scans it briefly then looks at her with suspicion _again._ “This was calculated.”

“A little birdie told me the dead last gets teamed with the top gun.”

“Gun?” Shikamaru echoes the word curiously and Shikai pulls out the bullshit again.

“It’s a thing from a western country. I read about it in a book.”

“Funny how you remember a book but not your dad.”

“Life is strange.” She says serenely.

“So… let’s spar, then.” He says, knowing _damn well_ it’ll catch her out.

“Brain swelling.” She reminded before shovelling the last bit of rice down her throat.

But she sees the glint in his eyes.

  
He _knows_ it’s suspicious at best.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Either she had seriously misjudged Naruto, or she seriously misjudged herself.

He is…

_ So fucking annoying. _

Like, holy crap. She knows he’s a good person and calms down a lot eventually, but right now he’s a bundle of energy that screams ‘believe it’ over everything and bitches loudly about Sasuke.

So in the end she scraps that part of the to-do list. She’ll make friends later. For now, Shikai focuses on number one.  _ Danzo. _

Danzo needs to  _ abanzo _ her new home. Hah.

Seriously, though, she has to kill him somehow. “Kunoichi or civilian?” She wonders, because it actually matters hugely. As a civilian, she could have the benefit of travelling under the radar, so to speak, and that might open doors for her.

As a kunoichi she’ll have a harder time doing that, as his protectors will be on guard. She finds herself walking past Danzo’s house and contemplates going in, but somehow she knows he isn’t even there. She dismisses that idea as quickly as it had formed, continuing on her way.

As a civilian, she’d be safer, too, for the most part. Hell, she has no idea how to even use chakra, how can she be a kunoichi?

The only thing she isn’t terrible in is taijutsu. She can’t throw kunai or shuriken for fuck all, genjutsu isn’t her forte, and she can’t figure out how to ask how chakra works to try jutsu.

In the end, she asks Shikaku to re-teach her, quiet and embarrassed enough that he didn’t even joke before helping her stick leaves to her skin. It’s a weird practice but it works, drawing her chakra to the surface and making it tangible. 

Still, even without including the regular three jutsu, she does  _ horrible _ at the Academy.

Appallingly so. Bad enough that even Shikamaru commented on it, until she beat him in taijutsu.

The only good thing she brought to this new world is jiu jitsu.

The art was designed for smaller, more agile people anyways. Anyone could learn it, but at her current size, she’s at the ‘prime’ for ass kicking.

The bigger the opponent, the easier it is to take them down, and she grinds Shikamaru’s face into the dirt twice before he calls it. “Alright. What changed?” He demands and Shikai shrugs, putting on her innocent face.

“Maybe I don’t want to be  _ dead _ last. Maybe I want to actually put some work into my body. Maybe you need to figure it out yourself.” She says with a dismissive sniff. 

“You’re my sister. If you need to talk…” He trails off awkwardly and she grins at him. 

“I’m fine. Just working a little harder than before.”

“What triggered that?” Shikamaru asks, still clearly suspicious, and Shikai sighs.

“What if I didn’t fall?” She asks, throwing out the excuse instantly. She almost regrets it when Shikamaru goes a bit pale, eyes widening. “I don’t remember it. Maybe it was a root that cracked my head open. Maybe it was a person. The doctor said my skull looks like it was fractured before the fall, but I don’t remember that.” Shikai shakes her head, grimacing. “I don’t want to be helpless in a world full of monsters.” She says, and for once, it’s honest.

“Monsters?” He echoes with a concerned wrinkle of his brow.

“Shinobi, Shikamaru.” Shikai says, rolling her eyes when he looks confused still. “Shinobi are monsters. All of them. And so will we be.”

“Shinobi protect the people.” Shikamaru says, a bit cautiously.

“Shinobi make money killing people. The bigger the bounty, the better. That’s not altruistic, Shika.” She argues darkly. “That’s what we’re signing up to be. Contract killers, not protectors of the peace. The Academy… it lies to us.” She shakes her head again. “Ask Dad if you don’t believe me.”

He says nothing for a long minute, then frowns at her. “Why are you doing this, then, if you feel so strongly about it?”

She eyes him seriously, considering for a moment. “Because your idea is the right one. It’s not accurate, but… it should be. Shinobi should be protectors first, not killers.”

“Your sister’s right.” Shikaku says, scaring the crap out of both kids. 

“Jeez, Dad.” Shikai half gasps, having heard nothing of his approach. Then again, he’s a shinobi. Of course she wouldn’t hear him. It’s probably against the rules. 

“You both know that being a shinobi means taking lives - I raised you to know it.”

“Pragmatism.” Shikai pipes in and Shikaku nods.

“Yes. Pragmatism. Compartmentalizing. Weighing the value of your life or your teammate’s life against that of your enemy.” The ‘siblings’ exchange a quick glance at that. “The answer seems obvious, doesn’t it? Obviously you choose your teammate. Your friend. Your sibling.” Shikaku says quietly, leaning a shoulder against a tree. “But it’s not so easy when you come face to face with it. The reality is much harsher. The fact is, taking a life will be the most difficult thing you’ll ever do as a shinobi.”

“So in this regard, Shikai is correct. Shinobi are monsters. Each and every one of us.” Shikaku concludes grimly. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing good. Many of us are fighting to improve the shinobi world just like Shikai suggests doing. By leaning towards the moral side, we make shinobi a little less monstrous.”

Shikai considers that for a minute, exchanging a thoughtful glance with Shikamaru. “Sounds very zen. I’m not sure it’s very realistic, though.” She critiques.

“Very funny.” Shikaku frowns at her. “We can only make the shinobi world better by acting better. By doing nothing, we change nothing.”

“So by becoming a good shinobi, you make all shinobi a bit more ‘good’.” Shikamaru summarizes and Shikaku nods.

“Like I said. Very zen.” Shikai applauds. Shikamaru actually exerts the effort to roll his eyes at her. 

“Alright, get back to practicing. Kunai and shuriken, Shikai?” Shikaku asks and she blushes a bit, embarrassed by her disastrous skill. 

“Um. Yes.”

“We all had to start somewhere.” Shikaku reminds her gently before striding away and towards the house. The not-really-siblings watch him go for a minute before looking at each other.

“Kunai first?” He asks, arching a brow.

“Shut up.” She snaps, pulling a face and snatching up a dull kunai from the training post. “I’ll make you eat dirt if you make a joke about it.”

“Sure thing.” Shikamaru huffs, and makes absolutely no promises not to.

 

* * *

 

Strategically speaking, it’s smarter all around to just bite the bullet and suffer through being a shinobi. Sure, it puts her on dangerous missions, but it also means she knows how to take care of herself, which means a lot in a world like the Naruto one.

At least, in theory.

In reality, she’s still frankly… terrible.

At, like, everything ninja.

No matter how much she practices, she’s still just…  _ terrible! _ Her aim is trash, she never uses the right amount of force, and she straight up  _ fumbles _ with her kunai and shuriken constantly.

“I hate this.” She complains loudly to Shikamaru, who helpfully adjusts her stance.

“I can’t believe you’re this terrible at it.” He says, and it’s so sincerely she can’t even be  _ mad _ at him. “If I didn’t believe your amnesia before…” he trails off, eyes narrowed as she almost drops a kunai in her surprise.

“You believe me?” She asks, startled. “Wait, I mean, yes believe me, I’m telling the truth,” she totally isn’t, “but what changed?” 

“You’re honestly awful at this.” Shikamaru informs her bluntly. “It’s like you’ve never held kunai before in your life, but I  _ know _ you have. Frankly, you can’t fake being this bad.”

She’s pretty sure she could fake whatever she wanted to if she set her mind to it, but she just nods and keeps her counterproductive thoughts to herself. 

What an unexpected bonus!

“Good point, that. You should keep that in mind, later.” She says, then pauses in digging her own grave. “I mean, in case you forget.” 

Yeah, that didn’t make it worse.

Shikamaru squints at her.

“I’m tired.” She says defensively. “I’ve been throwing thing for hours, can I rest now?”

“No. Not until you hit something  _ resembling _ the bullseye at least once.”

“God  _ damn it.” _

Two days later, when they’re standing in the training ground, not a single kunai or shuriken has landed anywhere near the bullseyes.

“Maybe I have an eye problem?” Shikai suggests weakly.

Shikamaru grimaces.

 

* * *

 

So she makes a terrible shinobi.

Even a terrible shinobi is still better than a defenseless civilian, she reminds herself. And hey! Lee became a great shinobi, and he only could do taijutsu, too!

And she  _ has _ chakra, she’s just balls at using it (so far), which means her chances of success are even greater. 

There. That’s the glass half full approach.

The glass half empty one? She  _ sucks _ and is probably going to die. Yay.

On the bright side, she’s pretty sure this is just a crazy fever dream anyways, so death isn’t a very scary prospect. Plus, there’s a confirmed afterlife in this universe if she happens to be wrong, which was pretty freakin’ neat-o.

In the end, Shikai makes the executive decision to say ‘fuck the police’. No offense intended for the police. She throws the rules and regulations to the wind, lights her shuriken and kunai on fire - which is a failure, basically, because plain fire doesn’t naturally burn hot enough to melt that shit - and absolutely, one-hundred percent  _ refuses _ to so much as  _ touch _ one again.

The first time Shikaku offered to help her train in using kunai, she’d just glared at him until he went away. It was surprisingly effective - the man was terrible at standing up to females. 

Honestly, she suspects that’s the only reason she gets away with half the shit she pulls.

With a sigh, Shikai throws herself back into her taijutsu training.

 

She has to be good at  _ something, _ at least.

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Chapters after this will be longer - I'm just trying to find my niche right now, is all.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed <3


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